


This Word Lies At The Bottom Of A Lake

by berhanes (sqvalors)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Black Family (Harry Potter), Canon Compliant, Dreams and Nightmares, Drowning, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Marauders' Era, Post-Prank, Prophetic Dreams, Sirius Black & James Potter Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-01-26 12:34:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12557488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sqvalors/pseuds/berhanes
Summary: R/S Games 2017 - Day 25 - Team SiriusBriefly he'd considered going to visit Remus, but Sirius has too many stacked up feelings about him to add any more, and he doesn't trust himself not to ruin their carefully patched situation in the wake of the incident – it's only been a year, after all, and there's no better way to shatter a barely recovered friendship than by doing something stupid like throwing out a declaration of love in the middle of explaining the myriad ways in which your family is deranged and terrible. So instead Sirius had hailed the Knight Bus and requested Bowness-on-Windermere.





	This Word Lies At The Bottom Of A Lake

**Author's Note:**

> The title is swiped from the Margaret Atwood poem _Two Headed Poems (ix)_ \- coincidentally she writes a lot about lakes and/or drowning, so her poetry collection was a good companion to have alongside for this. Some liberties may have been taken with chronology here in terms of canon (when are they not) but there really was a supposed eachy sighting up at Windermere in the early 70s, so at least that's accurate. I had a lot of fun writing this one, especially returning to marauder-era dynamics for the first time in FOREVER.  
>  This has been tweaked a lil bit since initially being published in the 2017 R/S Games, mostly because I found tiny errors only after it was published.  
>  **Prompt:** #39 - "We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.” - from the play _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead_ by Tom Stoppard

On the Knight Bus somewhere between the house in Islington and the Potters' cottage up in the Lakes Sirius falls asleep and dreams of his brother. This in itself is not unusual – Regulus has been hovering like a phantom at the forefront of most of his dreams lately, appearing both as an accusing reflection and as the bright little boy who looked at Sirius like he could call the tides once upon a time, tousled and sharp eyed. Neither incarnation is one Sirius enjoys, seeing as how his corporeal brother hasn't spoken more than a word to him in the fortnight they've both been home from Hogwarts nor forgiven him for the apparent betrayal of driving their mother to the brink of whatever purist rage she's inhabited for the last five and a half years, which works out fine because Sirius hasn't forgiven Regulus for staying docile and that makes them even, probably.

Anyway: the dream.

In it Sirius is out by the very edge of the Hogwarts lake in the light of the half moon, staring down past the mirrored sheen into the bottomless dark of the water and waiting. At first he isn't sure what he's waiting for, heart beating rhythmic in his throat, but then the water seems to light up dimly from somewhere deep down and he finds that what he's taken to be his own reflection is moving of its own accord, closer and closer to the surface. The moonlight shatters into sparkling shards as Regulus' face surges up and out of the lake, blossoming with noisy gasps and all the while fixing Sirius with a needlepoint glare that seeps into his skin like a chill. There's a fear then, a dull sense of foreboding. Sirius whirls back to face the looming castle which stands more distant than it ever is in reality and finds his robes seized at the chest by a different Regulus, bone dry and unforgiving before him on the lawn. He sees this happening from both his own perspective and as an omnipresent third person, such is the disorientating normalcy of dreams, and even though the Regulus on the shore isn't wet Sirius smells lake water and mildew on his robes where they're bunched in pale fists and he says Regulus _,_ he says please _,_ he says something else that gets lost in the dream and the dark. For a moment it feels as if Sirius is staring at his own fractured face and then they're falling backwards, his brother's hands – his own hands – tangled in his robes. They hit the water and Sirius can't tell which one of them is sinking the other.

He wakes with a jolt just as the dream version of himself opens his mouth under water and swallows glass. His head feels bruised where it's been bouncing off the bus window at every sharp turn and there's a tightness in his chest that makes him want to cry if he focuses on it, so he doesn't. Outside the London roads have faded into motorway, blurring together so fast it's comfortingly bland, like white-noise on the muggle telly the Lupins have in their living room. Briefly he'd considered going to visit Remus, but a quick evaluation of what that did to his blood pressure had ruled it out fairly decisively. Sirius has too many stacked up feelings about him to add any more, and he doesn't trust himself not to ruin their carefully patched situation in the wake of the incident – it's only been a year, after all, and there's no better way to shatter a barely recovered friendship than by doing something stupid like throwing out a declaration of love in the middle of explaining the myriad ways in which your family is deranged and terrible. So instead Sirius had hailed the Knight Bus and requested Bowness-on-Windermere.

Across the aisle to his right is a woman with a small girl tucked gently under her arm. They're dozing gently now, but when Sirius had boarded the bus with a face like thunder the witch had drawn her daughter close and watched him carefully as he arranged himself and his luggage, like he was a bomb likely to go off, like there was a flashing warning sigil hanging over his head. At the time it had made him feel defiant, more secure in his current role as wayward son/disgraced heir/shameful curse on the noble house of Black etcetera, which was almost vindicating enough to crowd out the whirlwind thing inside him that wanted to slip through a crack in the rickety bus seats and disappear.

The bus doesn't run out as far as the Potters' cottage so Sirius ends up walking a fair way from where it drops him by the post office, increasingly grateful for the intrinsic magic that makes his trunk lighter than it should be given that he's shoved most of his life into it. He considers casting a faint  _lumos_ to make up for the lack of street-lamps – his current lack of permanent address might impinge on an official Ministry slap on the wrist about underage magic – but the road is fairly straight, and summer nights are never that dark, and focusing on putting one foot in front of the other is grounding enough to pull him out of the dream still playing in fragments.

Sirius hasn't spoken to Regulus since the first night of the holidays, July like a pressure cooker. He had been firing scathing comments across the already fractious dinner table, trying to goad either his brother or his parents into a fight just to break the tension: as usual Walburga had been coldly ignoring both of them, turning her irritation towards Kreacher and the kitchen elves instead when any of them dared to enter the dining room without first being bidden. Sirius had kept up a fairly steady stream of small digs, not yet resorting to the childish kick under the table though he dearly wanted to if only to make Regulus yelp. He couldn't remember exactly what he'd finished on - probably something triumphant about Slytherin losing their last Quidditch match due to the team being too slimy to stay on their brooms, or perhaps it was the one about Malfoy only allowing Regulus into his clique because he knew he'd do absolutely anything to impress his superiors, but whatever it was had pushed Regulus into snapping his attention up from his plate and hissing  _well at least i'm not a filthy queer_ across the table with enough venom to paralyse Sirius where he sat. The feeling in his chest had not been unlike the time he fell hard from his broom in first year and lay gasping on the grass, time as suspended as his breath. There was the smallest amount of regretful fear in Regulus' eyes as if he hadn't been expecting to hear himself say that so publicly, as if the frosty silence that received it made him nervous. Weeks later and Sirius is still not sure how his brother had known.

By the time he gets to the Potters' garden gate the sky is paling with the threat of morning. Sirius parks his trunk on the path and walks around the house until he finds the window he wants, quaintly circular and almost hidden by wisteria in the peak of the roof. it takes three handfuls of pebbles from Mr Potter's ornamental rockery until James appears, a vision in an old quidditch jersey, and pushes the window open as far as it'll go.

“Do you know what time it is,” James says through a yawn. Unsurprised, unfaltering.

“Time you came and opened your sodding front door, I think,” Sirius says, which means please don't ask anything of me yet. James isn't stupid and Sirius has sent him so many scrawled letters from London since summer started that he's probably pieced together the state of things anyway, but still. “This is a little too Romeo and Whatsit for my liking. Wherefore art, and all that.”

“Juliet,” James corrects, and then disappears from the window. Sirius trudges back round to the front path and waits. He feels the vice that's held his insides taught for weeks finally start to ease. Within ten minutes the red lacquered front door creaks on its hinges and James slips out onto the path, glasses crooked and hair sticking out at all angles, looking a little too concerned for Sirius' liking.

“I'd have expected better hospitality from the Potter heir,” he says. Grins too fast, hoping to keep the mood light. “Leaving a man abandoned while you stop to put on trousers. Disgraceful. What would your mother say.”

“For starters she'd ask what you were doing in her front garden at barely past three in the morning.” James rolls his eyes as he reaches for Sirius' trunk and starts back towards the doorway. “Keep your voice down as well, will you. Can't have you yelling in the garden.”

“It's not like you have neighbours.”

“If you want to deal with waking my mother up five hours too early by all means keep it up.” James glances over his shoulder as they tread quietly down the hall and leaves the trunk at the bottom of the stairs, just beneath a hat-stand that adjusts its lower hooks to make room. Sirius shucks off his cloak and hangs it up on a spare hook that makes itself apparent, and then follows James through the softly creaking house.

He has always loved the quiet hospitality of the Potters' country home, full of trinkets and heirlooms so far removed from those kept on the Black family shelves it's difficult to imagine the two families ever having moved in the same social circles. In a bid to discover common pureblood ground during a visit the summer after first year, Sirius had asked casually if the Potters kept any old poison rings on display and had then had to spend almost half an hour describing the several ornate glass cases kept in the study at home, full of 15th century cursed jewellery and related paraphernalia. James had looked suitably horrified and tentatively offered up a brief tour of the antique potions equipment in the drawing room, almost apologising for the lack of anything lethal.

James ushers him into the dining room and then disappears off into the pantry, emerging eventually with a bone china plate of cold meats and four bread rolls left over from the day before. “Hold that for a second,” he says, waving the plate at Sirius. “I'll make some tea and then we can go up.”

“Proper little hostess aren't you.”

“Fuck off.”

Sirius leans against the doorframe and hopes the headache starting above his eyes isn't putting down roots. He thinks that the polite thing to do in this situation is to apologise for turning up unannounced with the clear intention of staying for an indefinite amount of time but then that'd be a rather un-Sirius thing to do and besides, he can't quite remember the last time he explained himself to James. They've known each other too long to have to bother most of the time. Of course James will eventually ask about the situation back in London and Sirius will try to avoid being too sincere at first, joke about his fledgling Muggle record collection being the final straw in his relationship with his mother or something equally as mundane, and by evening they'll have got into Mr Potter's liquor cabinet and the whole wretched story will have no doubt come out in lurid detail. Sirius wonders vaguely if his spot on the tapestry is still smouldering.

“Don't forget, the fourth and seventh steps creak.” James hands him an old-fashioned teacup and stands expectantly until Sirius makes a move towards the hall. “I think it's deliberate, an archaic Potter booby trap or something.”

“Probably gave good old great-great-great-granddad Potter a right laugh,” says Sirius, although really if anyone has the monopoly on archaic family booby traps it's him and they both know it. He thinks about saying so for a moment before deciding that turning the conversation to his family is exactly the opposite of what he wants to do, so instead he mounts the stairs – careful to step three to five, six to eight – and quietly pads down the landing until he gets to the smaller set that leads up to the attic. A small portrait of James' great-grandmother on his father's side jolts awake as Sirius brushes past and tuts quietly at him, and it's still a more pleasant exchange than he'd have had with any of the ancestors at home. Once they reach James' room Sirius places the plate of bread and ham down carefully on the desk and takes a sip of his too-hot tea and realises he can breathe again.

“We can top-tail until tomorrow,” James says, through a yawn. “Mum can transfigure the armchair like she did last summer.”

Sirius is tugging his boots off one-handed without undoing the laces, teacup held aloft. He drops the first boot to the floor with a thud. “So long as you don't kick me in the head this time.”

“It's only ever for your own good.”

“Pass us a bun would you.”

“They're closer to you than me,” says James, already laid flat out on his quilt. He rolls his head to one side so he can look at Sirius and frowns just enough, the beginning of a question already building in his mouth. “Things at home not so toujours pur then?”

“You know that doesn't make sense,” Sirius says, and lets the second boot fall. “Grammatically.”

“Don't dodge the question, Pads.” James sits up somewhat reluctantly and reaches for his own cup of tea. “Wasn't expecting you til the others got here.”

Sirius shrugs. “You know what it's like.”

“Usually you send some form of forewarning ahead of arrival, y'know,” James says. “'What has four legs and arrives at midnight' was I think your most cryptic precursory owl. And you were late.”

“I think it adds to my mystique.” Sirius picks up a bun and prises it open little by little, looking very determined about it so as to avoid eye contact and further conversation. He lets the breathing space last a little longer and then: “Although I don't doubt that all of Slytherin will know about everything by the second bloody day of term.”

“Did you set fire to a rug again?” James squints at him across the top of his tea, steam clouding his glasses. “Kick seven shades of shit out of Regulus? Not that he wouldn't deserve it, I mean.”

At the mention of his brother Sirius blanches almost involuntarily and covers it by stuffing half a messily constructed ham sandwich into his mouth. The row that led to everything was so explosive he's surprised he  _hadn't_  set fire to anything, the memory of his anger and his magic burning indistinguishable from each other just beneath the surface, on the cusp of something terrible. Instead the flames had come from his mother, leaping in sparks from her fingertips to his spot on the family tapestry with a crack loud enough to make him flinch like a trapped animal. He swallows down the sandwich and the bristling fear and shakes his head.

James lowers his mug into his lap, crossed legged on his bed. He looks suddenly solemn. “Sirius, what happened?”

\---

By the time Remus and Peter arrive on a Sunday in early August Sirius has already gone through the emotional ringer that is Mrs Potter's unwavering if somewhat smothering support - his 3am appearance and apparent inability to pick up a towel overlooked - and he's trying valiantly to distance himself from the whole thing. If he really thinks about it the estrangement doesn't feel all that different from how things were before, and truthfully he's been orphaning himself for years, locking down familial obligations tight in the well of his chest alongside whatever remains of his relationship with Regulus. Thinking about his brother hurts, so instead Sirius throws himself over-zealously into spending time with the others and circumnavigating any attempts at conversation that gets too deep. He hasn't provided specifics about the situation, and aside from Remus watching him surreptitiously over dinner that evening there's been an almost suspicious lack of intrigue. He wonders if James forewarned them, sent a letter out prior to their arrival – 'Sirius has been chucked out rather unceremoniously and is somewhat penniless at present, please don't ask about his summer' or words to that effect.

Late on Monday afternoon the four of them are out by Lake Windermere with a picnic basket full of homemade scones and a large bottle of Ogden's Old that Peter smuggled up from home, the sun faded enough to be comfortably warm. Sirius had worried that being near the lake would bring up the nightmares - still recurring in varying degrees - but aside from a sense of unease he can offset with the whiskey there isn't the sort of recoil he'd been expecting.

James has his Muggle jeans rolled up mid-calf so he can dip his feet in the water, and Remus has half a menthol cigarette clamped in the corner of his mouth: this is a habit he picked up earlier in the summer, he said, although the exact origins of it have yet to be unearthed. Sirius suspects the week at the beginning of July that Remus fell off the map, broken only by a drunken near incomprehensible phonecall from a Soho phone-box at three in the morning that Sirius had answered on the Muggle rotary telephone he'd installed in his bedroom to spite his parents, which itself had been a birthday present from Remus two years prior. The call had been slurred and crackling and Remus had eventually been timed out because of his failure to put another 20p in the machine, but it had left Sirius feeling tightly wound in a way he couldn't explain. He knows Remus didn't tell the others. 

“Y'know there's supposed to be an Eachy in this lake,” Peter says. He's looking disapprovingly at James, who by this point has both feet submerged. “A muggle took photos of it a couple years back.”

“Nah they didn't,” James says. “That was over at Bassenthwaite, and the photographs are terrible. The Windermere Eachy doesn't get out much.”

“Seen it have you?”

James shakes his head. “Dad did though, when he was small. Said it looked a bit like a merperson but sludgier and with legs and like, twice as tall. I don't think it's been seen for years.” He draws one foot out of the lake and, balanced a little off kilter, skims his toes across the surface towards the others.

Sirius, who has quite studiously been watching Remus – or more specifically, Remus' mouth around the cigarette as he inhales – blinks as the fine shower of lake water hits his face. “God, did you have to? Someone should push you over, Potter. I'd do it if it didn't mean getting up.”

“And whose kitchen would you ransack if I'm face down in the lake?”

“I'm sure grief would make your mother quite generous,” Remus says, dropping back against the grass and tucking one arm up beneath his head so as to ensure his withering glances can still be reliably conveyed. He's still burning through his menthol, only now it's resting between the first two fingers of his left hand, smouldering delicately. The bottle of firewhiskey is propped against his thigh. “I do hope she'd bring scones to your funeral.”

“Don't you start,” says James, standing again on both feet. “Pads, you ever seen an Eachy?”

“Don't get many lake creatures in central London, mate.” Sirius thinks about it. “There are definitely grindylows in the lake up at Alphard's place though. Nasty little buggers.” His uncle's estate, inherited as most things in their family are from a long line of patrician Blacks and in a state of repair that suggests only some of them put in the required upkeep, is one of the few places Sirius will miss with any sort of certainty. He had written a hurried and near illegible letter to Alphard the week he returned home from school; it detailed the grinding despair he felt upon being stuck in Grimmauld Place again and how his mother had hardly relented in her criticism of his character, and within half a day Alphard had written back on parchment charmed to remain blank if held by anyone other than its intended recipient, imploring him to visit over the summer and to take no notice of Walburga's 'astounding lack of judgement and basic human decency', which Sirius had thought very nice of him over all.

“My mum swears there's merpeople in the Thames,” says Peter. “But dad says the water isn't right.”

“There's bound to be something in there.” Remus stubs his cigarette out and then reaches across Sirius' lap to get to the picnic basket. “Statistically speaking.”

“'Statistically speaking' are we, Professor Lupin,” drawls Sirius, over-enunciating his consonants in a way that's a lot more difficult after a few drinks.

“Do fuck off Pads, I don't think anyone asked for a rerun of your childhood elocution lessons.” Remus rolls his eyes and then settles back into his former position, this time with two scones stacked in his palm. Sirius leans close enough to swipe the top one and ignores Remus' scowl.

“I think it'd be well cool to see a lake monster,” says James, wading a little further out and squinting out across the water. “They're quite rare.”

“Rare or just unwilling to be poked and prodded by every last overly intrigued wizard who thinks he's the next Newt Scamander,” Remus says.

“I believe you just described yourself there, Moony. You'd definitely be the sort to stay in a lake cave for decades.” Sirius says. It feels almost like testing the waters, throwing harmless digs on the table when things are only just settling between them.

“Yes well, I suppose you're too much of a narcissist to be a recluse.”

Sirius shrugs, mouth full of crumbs. James by this point has moved far enough out to have a damp line edging up the cuffs of his jeans, which Sirius thinks is unwise given his propensity for clumsiness and general lack of self-preservation. Besides, the water leaves him uneasy. “James, if you drown in a drunken accident we really will have to play on your mum's hospitality. And as much as I'd like to inherit your room I'm not sure I'm as keen on the stack of backdated issues of _Harlot_ magazine you've got stashed under your bed.”

James scoffs over his shoulder at that, but pushes his way closer to the bank. “I'll leave them to Pete then, I'm sure he'd gladly take them off your hands.”

“Depends entirely on the state you've left them in mate,” says Peter.

Remus snorts. “They're probably in need of a mercy killing.”

James rolls his eyes hard enough for them to fall out of his head and almost overbalances as he kicks another fine spray of water across them as retribution. Sirius snaps his face to the side to avoid the worst and in doing so collides with Remus' shoulder, the rise of his cheekbone hitting the thin cotton of Remus' shirt hard enough to make him blink. He is suddenly very aware of his breathing, of the minute way Remus tenses at the contact as if burned. It lasts a fraction of a second and Sirius still feels exposed. As if somehow the others will notice and see how weirdly awkward they still are, and Remus will confess that he'd hoped all along that they wouldn't have to keep pretending to be on good terms let alone start fooling around again, god forbid, and Sirius will have to really throw himself in the lake or something. He hadn't realised it had been so long since he'd been this close to Remus until he inhales the smell of his shirt and it feels like somebody has dropped a brick to the bottom of his stomach.

“Honestly, no respect,” James is saying, when Sirius zones back into the conversation. “Sirius get your nose out of Moony's armpit will you, and throw me a scone.”

“You know his aim's terrible, don't set him a challenge like that,” Remus says. He's focusing very intently on setting the bottle of firewhiskey upright. Sirius watches him out of the corner of his eye and wonders if he has the same sinking feeling in his gut, the same apparent inability to let go of the thread that keeps them close even now.

He wonders if anything is ever really salvageable.

\---

Sirius has not told James about the nightmares. This is in part because he doesn't _have_ to tell James about the nightmares – while it was just the two of them the dreams were hard to hide, throwing him out of sleep in a cold sweat on the ugly side of midnight, choking on glass that isn't there loud enough to shock himself. The first night it happened James had sat in the dark with him until his breathing returned to normal, but he hadn't ask for details and Sirius hadn't offer them. It feels too much to autopsy himself like that, even to James.

The night after their trip down to Windermere Sirius wakes with a breath caught in his throat like a trap. He struggles up onto his elbows, more difficult in a sleeping bag than expected, and finds Remus staring at him.

“James said you'd had trouble sleeping,” he says quietly.

“Sorry I woke you.”

“It's okay.” Remus is a notoriously deep sleeper, especially around the Full, so Sirius expects he hadn't been sleeping in the first place. Neither of the others have woken - James still fast asleep with his mouth open and Peter splayed out on the armchair that Mrs Potter had transfigured into a small futon.

Sirius draws his knees close to his chest, suddenly cold, suddenly self-conscious. Remus sits up, careful to shift quietly beneath the rustling blankets.

“Do you want to talk about them?” He asks. “The dreams.”

Sirius stares at his hands in the dark and sees them wrapped around Regulus' throat. He tucks them back into his sleeping bag and says, “Nothing much happens, really.”

Remus makes a noise that sounds entirely unconvinced, the sort of short exhale of breath he usually saves for when James denies taking the last of his parchment or one of them has left crumbs on his sheets again. Sirius had almost expected him to leave it at that and go back to sleep, but Remus hasn't given him the silent treatment for seven and a half months now and he's glad of it. The period immediately after the incident had been excruciating, like walking on broken crockery and knowing you deserved it for being clumsy in the first place. Remus had been furious with him, cold and closed off for two months in the beginning, and then it had turned into a wounded look that was somehow worse. Sirius had thought very seriously about trying to beg McGonagall for a dormitory switch once Remus left the hospital wing, but James had told him to stop being such a fucking idiot about it, that eventually he was going to have to look Remus in the eye again, and if he couldn't do that then he might as well move dorms to avoid all of them and be done with it.

“When I was small I used to dream about being chased through the woods a lot,” Remus offers. He's picking at the hemming on one of his blankets, not looking at Sirius. “Every night the summer before first year. They'd get worse around the full moon obviously, but that happens with any sort of dream, so. Anyway. They got better once I told my mum about them. I mean they didn't go away, but they got less terrible. It helps, sometimes.”

“You're not going to go all Trelawney and try and decipher anything, are you.”

“Sirius.”

“Alright.” He takes a deep breath. “But not here.”

“You want to go on a late night wander?” Remus quirks an eyebrow almost imperceptibly. Sirius elects to ignore it.

“You know how Peter gets if you wake him,” He says. “Besides I think I could do with some air.” Being this close to Remus in the dark is not uncomfortable per se, and it's hardly like they're at each other's throats, but there's an edge to it that makes him uneasy. Remus is watching him expectantly. “We could walk down to Windermere or something.”

“I wasn't that keen on a full night's sleep anyway,” Remus says, but he's half smiling as he says it. He extricates himself from his blankets and stands, reaching for a threadbare jumper to pull on over his T-shirt. He turns away from Sirius while he slips out of his pyjama bottoms to drag a pair of jeans on over his boxers, something he has only been doing in the year since the incident out of some sort of quiet boundary reinforcement that pulls at something in Sirius' chest, and when he turns back to face him he says, “Well? Come on then.”

“Alright, alright.” Sirius shuffles quietly out of his sleeping bag and locates his jeans and his socks, and then picks his way across the floor towards the door Remus is already holding open. “Don't forget, the main staircase -”

“Four and seven creak, I know.”

They make it past the row of Potter portraits and down to the main landing with only mild grumbling and a glare from James' Great-Great-Uncle Whimslow, and they're able to slip out of the back door quietly enough, once Sirius collects his battered leather jacket from the coat rack and his shoes from the hall.

“We could walk down to the jetty, y'know,” he says, fumbling with his shoelaces on the way down the garden path. “Where James jumped in last summer to try and prove he could swim across the whole lake.”

Remus starts off down the garden. “It's a shame he couldn't, isn't it really.”

The jetty is out on the edge of the lake nearest to the Potters' house, a fifteen minute walk down the hill at an ambling pace. Sirius finishes with his laces and half-runs to catch up with Remus, who has already made it out of the back gate and started out across the grass, lighting one of his menthol cigarettes with a Muggle lighter dredged up from the back pocket of his jeans. Sirius is not unused to doing things that feel clandestine but there's something about this that feels different, somehow, like the crux upon which something is about to swing and change. If he thinks about he can count the number of times he's been alone with Remus since last year on both hands, just about. They walk in comfortable silence for a while and Sirius feels the last dregs of the nightmare lose their grip.

“Have you been having the dreams long?” Remus asks after a while, sneaking a sideways glance at him. Sirius shrugs one shoulder.

“Since summer started, really. They got worse after being at home.”

“Somehow that doesn't shock me,” Remus says, a brittle undertone to it that disappears as quick as it came. “I don't imagine Grimmauld is all that conducive to an undisturbed night's sleep.”

“It's not conducive to much except making me want to fucking leave.” Sirius scowls down at the path as they walk. He worries vaguely that lifting the lid on the dreams will do more harm than good, but a cynical part of himself wonders if such a concern is at this point futile – all things considered there is very little he could do to make himself feel worse than he has for the last few months, so he figures he may as well plough on. “Which I have now, I suppose. Left I mean.” He sees Remus frown in the moonlight.

“Left?”

“I was going to tell you and Peter tomorrow probably, it's not a secret. It's why I was up at James' before both of you with all of my stuff.” He grins quick and too sharp in the dark, gesturing out with his hands still in the pockets of his jacket. “I stand before you as the ex-heir to the house of Black, the official family embarrassment and so on.”

Remus has slowed his pace so he hangs back a little, pulling a face that suggests he's trying not to look too concerned about the news. “You've been disowned? Christ.”

“Disowned, disinherited, more or less banned from the house and any familial abode,” he says, making a small mock bow. “Got blasted from that fucking tapestry as well, so I think they might mean it.”

“I suppose that explains why James' mum keeps looking at you like she wants to feed you cake every day of the week.”

“I think I'm definitely in line for a pity present once we have to go school shopping.”

“I'm glad you're thinking positively.”

Sirius exhales a short bitter laugh and kicks absently at a clump of grass as they clear the crest of the hill. Beneath them Lake Windermere stretches out like a sheet of silver in the moonlight, the expanse of it setting off the slightest twinge of panic in his chest, a tightness; it looks different in the dark, more like the dreams. To his left Remus has slowed almost to a stop, staring out at the map of stars spread out around and above them like a cloak. Sirius does what he always does when faced with such an unadulterated view of the night sky and zeros in on himself, singular and distant and the brightest.

Remus raises a hand and points, thin fingers curled loosely. “That's yours, isn't it?”

“Mm.” Sirius shuts down the automatic urge to look for other family namesakes and turns to face him instead. “Paying attention in astronomy at last, are we?”

“Only selectively,” Remus smiles, holding his gaze for the briefest of moments. He feels almost within reach, closer than he's felt for months now. If this was before Sirius thinks he might have kissed him.

“Come on then, I can see the jetty from here,” he says instead, snapping back around and beginning to pick his way down the steady incline. He can hear Remus following him but Sirius doesn't turn to check in case his feelings are somehow writ large on his face, a semaphore flag of fragile want. The last thing he needs this summer is to have something so near repair fall apart because he can't keep anything to himself. “Watch your footing in the dark.”

“Who said chivalry was dead.” Remus drops the stub of his cigarette and stamps it down into the grass.

It doesn't take long to get to the water and the thin stretch of the jetty, reaching out into Windermere like a rickety wooden spine, and then Sirius is standing on the very edge, the toes of his boots overhanging the water just enough. Looking out across at the other side makes his heart pound as if he's expecting Regulus to burst from the lake at any moment. It also feels easier, somehow, to confront it. There's space to breathe.

“I'm not dragging you out if you fall in, by the way.” Remus is hovering a little further back, watching him warily. The sleeves of his jumper are pulled down over his hands. “I'll let whatever lives down there take care of you.”

“Charming,” Sirius says, and then steps backwards so he has room to sit down, legs swinging. “Are you going to stay back there?”

Remus huffs a little indignantly but comes forward anyway, lowering himself gingerly onto the jetty edge. There is only room for one of them to put a hand down on the space between them, so Sirius keeps his in the pockets of his jacket. There's a breeze coming across the lake that lifts the slight curls of Remus' fringe from his forehead - he looks pale and a little gaunt, caught on the end of a growth spurt, and Sirius wants to lean into him and be held steady. The way Remus had frozen at accidental contact earlier doesn't set a positive precedent, though, and he doesn't feel like upsetting the balance of things.

“Maybe we'll see James' Eachy, or whatever it is.” Remus squints out across the lake.

“Can you imagine? He'd be apoplectic.” Sirius casts a glance around almost absent-mindedly. “It's a big enough lake to have something like that in it though, I suppose.”

“Bigger than the one at school and there's a shit load of stuff in that, so.”

Sirius makes a noise of agreement and then, because he can't keep the words locked down tight any more and anyway, Remus had asked in the first place, he says, “I keep dreaming about the Hogwarts lake, in the nightmares. It's always that lake and I'm always drowning or about to, and there's a pressure here,” he touches his palm to his sternum, “like I'm holding my breath. Regulus is there, nearly always. In the lake I mean, to start with, and then he's not and and he's pushing me in instead.” He doesn't mention that in half of the nightmares he cannot tell which one of them is the dead weight. He doesn't mention that sometimes he has his hands pressed tight around Regulus' neck.

Remus lets him talk and stares out at the other side of the lake while he listens, which is an allowance Sirius is glad for. It's only when Sirius has stopped and caught his breath, hands as fists in his pockets, that Remus turns to look at him. “Have you spoken to Regulus? Since leaving London, I mean.”

Sirius shakes his head, feels his jaw set in defiance against something he can't place. The water below rolls slowly like tar. “I didn't speak to him before leaving either.”

“You know he's only following what your parents do, Pads.”

“At dinner, the first night home. You didn't hear him, Remus. There were no upper school Slytherins to impress and he still.” Sirius wants to crawl out of his own skin. “He always knows where to hit.”

Remus has an expression on that suggests that maybe this is rather an example of the pot calling the kettle black and that doesn't help the panic climbing the notches of Sirius' spine, the growing fear that Remus won't let him back in.

“I'm not like him,” Sirius says, glancing sidelong at Remus, who does not look back. “I'm not, Moony. I'm not like any of them.” Maybe if he says it often enough, maybe if he inscribes it like a mantra into the cage of his ribs, maybe if he holds it holy in his mouth every day for the rest of his life it'll be true. A petulant voice deep down wants to rail against the unfairness of it all but he only has to look at Remus, who knows too well what it is to be on the receiving end of unfairness and has done for most of his young life, pulled too thin by the moon and bruised bone deep, to know to keep that to himself for now.

“I know.” Remus is watching his feet swing out over the water. Weary but not lying. “We're okay, you know that right? You keep acting like you have to do penance or something, which is oddly flattering I guess but also very tiring, and I don't know why you think I have to absolve you or whatever.”

“I don't.”

“If you say so.” Remus shakes his hair out of his eyes. “I just mean it's fine, alright.”

Sirius doesn't really know what to do with that so he holds onto it and says nothing. The night air plays warm across his face and he closes his eyes against it, content for the moment to ground himself to the sound of his breathing and the jetty edge cutting just a little into the backs of his thighs and the quiet whoosh of Windermere. For the first time since waking his heart beats at a steady pace. It's still a shock when cold fingers worm under his arm and into his jacket pocket, sliding snugly between his own.

“You don't have to look so on edge,” Remus says. He squeezes Sirius' hand gently. “I've held your hand before.”

“Not since -”

“Yes I know, not since you almost got me expelled for nearly murdering a fellow student and exposing my deep, dark secret to the whole school and what have you.” Remus says it wryly but with an undertone designed to remind Sirius of the sheer dumb luck that got them this far and of how quickly whatever is being offered now can be rescinded. Sirius tightens his hold on Remus' hand.

“I thought I'd fucked it,” he says. “You've hardly looked at me this year.”

“To be entirely honest I wasn't sure you hadn't fucked it. And then, I don't know. I missed you. You were a complete fucking arsehole, by the way, but I missed you.” He shrugs. “I almost came to see you at the start of summer, did you know that? I was in Soho and I thought about asking you to meet me.”

“You called me, on the telephone. Very drunk.”

“God knows how I remembered the number, considering.” Remus laughs, short and more breath than noise. “It turns out there are several ways to get into bars you're not technically old enough for.”

Sirius wants to ask about that but he doesn't. He isn't even sure if Remus would tell him. Instead he leans closer until his head rests on Remus' shoulder, and lets his eyes close – he can sit in this carved out space in the dark, this space that is just his or maybe theirs, depending, and everything is still. It's been a long time since he's felt still, settled and slow and not running. Remus presses his face to Sirius' hair, brief and soft, and then Sirius tilts his head back to look at him properly. “I'm glad I haven't lost you.”

“Don't get all sentimental on me, I'll push you in the lake.”

“No I mean it,” says Sirius. He can feel the pulse in Remus' throat. “I'd probably jump in voluntarily if I found out you hated me, honestly. It'd be tragic. This year has been terrible, and -”

He swallows the rest of his sentence, or rather Remus does, because his free hand is curved along Sirius' jaw, fingertips pressing cool circles into the dip of his neck, thumb holding his chin steady as he leans in to kiss him. The tension knot in Sirius' stomach unspools: Remus' mouth is soft against his own, opening just enough to let the heat in.

“Sorry, you were just starting to go on a bit,” Remus smirks, one side of his mouth quirked higher than the other, when he pulls back. “Please don't start soliloquising again. I told you it's fine.”

Sirius feels the heat rise in his face, and turns his nose into the hollow of Remus' collarbone with a small noise of protest. He's about to say something when Remus tenses against him and squeezes his fingers.

“What's that?” He whispers it as if they're being watched, and when Sirius opens his eyes and follows where Remus is pointing he sees why. “Look, Sirius.”

There's something rising from the water across from them, far enough out to be smudged around the edges but not unidentifiable. The Eachy holds its position, out of the lake as far as its torso now, dark eyes glinting in the moonlight. At first glance it could be mistaken for a swimmer treading water, until you noticed its size and the unsettling wrongness of it that sets the hair on the back of your neck on edge. Sirius tries to remember any lore he has on Eachies, whether they're the sort to drag you down to the depths with them like so many other water creatures or if they'll let you go on your way so long as you leave them undisturbed. For its part, the Eachy has not moved. He wonders if its eyesight is good enough to have really noticed them.

“Do you think we should leave?”

“My dad told me about one of these, further North. He said they're not as bad as Kelpies.” Remus frowns a little. “But that isn't really saying much. I'm not sure what sort of scale he was working on.”

Sirius watches the shape in the water and almost unconsciously draws his legs back up onto the jetty. He remembers the dream, his brother surging up in the centre of a lake like this one, in the same dark silence. Remus' hand in his pocket stops him from leaving. “I think we should head back,” he says.

“Mm. Probably. It's a shame we can't get a photograph of it for James. He'd lose his head.” Remus glances at him and seems to notice a spark of panic in his face, because he softens around the eyes and rubs the pad of his thumb across Sirius' knuckles. “It's alright, y'know. It's not coming any closer. I doubt it wants the attention any more than we do.”

Even as he says it though he starts to stand, and pulls Sirius up with him. Remus keeps his eyes on the lake, and as they make their way back towards land he glances backwards periodically. Sirius tries not to; he counts his steps back along the jetty and focuses on the hill ahead, the expanse of the sky. He reaches out and finds Remus' hand, laces his own into place. He does not look back.

He does not look back.


End file.
